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Christianity in the Media

From time to time – well, twice before, I’ve interviewed people who have stepped out into the public sphere as Christians and stuck to their guns, winsomely talking about Jesus. You can read interviews with Mike O’Connor from Rockhampton and Guy Mason from Melbourne. Today, we’re heading to Sydney. Chatting to David Ould – who has appeared on Channel Ten’s The Projectnot once, but twice. I wanted to chat to David about what engaging with culture looks like – or, more correctly, what engaging our culture with the Good News about Jesus looks like. What follows are some transcripted highlights from our chat.

For those not familiar with your story – how did this all happen?

“I ended up on the project almost on a whim. I was driving with my kids, to school, in the morning, and the radio station in Sydney was running a competition. And I thought “I might have a crack at that” – so that day when I got home from work I put together a little application and shot a little video with the kids. I thought there’s no way this will happen. I was absolutely astounded when I got a call three days later.”

Your first appearance you were joining the panel, the second you were speaking about a particular topic. How do you prepare?

“For the no holds barred panel discussion, the first thing I did to prepare was watching it a lot more than I had before, and just trying to get my head around the format, and the style – just getting my head around the temperature, you want to play the ball that’s in front of you.

It was the week of the gay weddings in New Zealand, and I was worried that that would get featured, but they covered that on Monday. You get a briefing pack of the day’s news on the day. That’s how you prepare for it. You read that, and then you just say I’m going to have a bit of fun.

The second time, they called me up, and ran the story by me – about ABS data on religious belief and affiliation in Australia. My brain goes “give them something a bit interesting” – so basically I told them they were wrong, and what the real story was.

One of the things you’ve got to do is think about how you talk about Jesus as positively as possible in front of a lot of people.

You’re always thinking, aren’t you, well you should be, what do I do to talk about Jesus. That’s surely my agenda as a Christian. To talk about Jesus. So then you start thinking – how does this data tell me about Jesus. The census data is really a reflection of nominalism, nominal Christian belief and the way our culture has shifted, people are just being more honest about their beliefs. And genuine Christian belief is of course centered around understanding who Jesus is, and responding to him – and so then it becomes natural to be able to talk about things in terms of Christianity, and then genuinely following Jesus. So that’s what I sought to do in the interview, and also what I sought to do is rather than talking about religion in general, is talk about what I know about. Which is Christianity. Which is still the big major religion in Australia.”

Did you feel like in the background stuff – you had to play down the Jesus stuff and surprise them when you got on?

No. I went in, I applied for the show the first time around with the line that normal Christians don’t get a fair play in mainstream media. I almost dared them to take me on on that basis. I felt no need to play down – in fact – quite the opposite, I felt like that was the gimmick in having me on, not just a Christian, but a minister in fact. So there’s no need to play that down. Is there? If that is your gimmick. So the call back on the second time was on that basis – because I’m a Christian. So, given that they’re speaking to you on that basis that you’re a Christian, and surely your great desire is to talk about Jesus, it seems to me a no brainer at that point, you just go Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.

Had you done much media before The Project? Are you a media tart?

Not a bit. No wait. That’s a lie. A little bit of local newspaper work on the lower north shore in Sydney. Just the sort of shameless stuff you do to try to get the church into the newspaper. But no, nothing like this.

You did some radio stuff around the project?

Yeah, we did some radio promos around the competition, I was on air a couple of times talking about it, and then we leveraged it into the local newspapers after it.

Some of the leveraging – that was about your charity a little bit?

Yeah, so the point of interest was “local minister on national TV” – so you play that card – but I’m really, in my job, trying to achieve two things – first and foremost I’m trying to achieve the proclamation of Jesus, here in my local community and have that done in a positive way, but also I’m spruiking my charity, which is based on the church grounds, which I’m the chairman of. To me, that’s actually doing the same thing, because to me “they see our good works and they praise our Father in Heaven.” So I have no problem talking about the good works we do in Jesus name. So just keeping those two things tight together in people’s sense of who we are.

Is that a form of cultural engagement?

It’s a form of community engagement.

What’s the difference?

“You can quote me on this. Cultural engagement seems to be a bit of a buzz word these days, I’m all for engaging with the culture. But it’s not a silver bullet. The Gospel is the silver bullet. So it’s important that we understand our culture, it’s important that we critique it, analyse it, but then it’s important that we bring the Gospel to bear on what we’ve observed there. So the question you’re asking, all the time, as you look at culture, is what is the great news, and the answer that the Gospel brings to the conundrums, to the problems, to the questions, that are being raised in the culture. And of course what is the answer that the Gospel brings to the questions the culture doesn’t know it should be asking. Which means, of course, you’ve got to start with the Gospel itself, and use it as the lens. The danger is we get to the position where we use our culture as a lens through which we look at the Gospel. So for example, the great extreme example is something like Liberation Theology – where the experience of people in a culture becomes the lens through which the Gospel is read. Whereas the flipside of that, is the example of slaves in America, where the Gospel became the lens through which they understood their experience. So slaves in the south could sing “free at last, free at last. I’m a Christian, I’m free from sin, and that radically impacts the way I see the world around me” – and Liberation Theologians, and further south, in South America, will look at “free at last” and say well you must be talking about your physical reality.”

Of course, the flipside is that we don’t read our culture at all, and we don’t understand how to talk to our culture at all. So the classic stereotype of sandwich board wearing people standing outside a supermarket shouting “the end of the world is nigh,” reading from the King James. That’s the classic example. But there’s a little bit of me that just wants to go, you know what, good on him. It’s the word of God and I’m not ashamed of the Gospel.

You’ve got to work out what that is – the thing that I fear is that we think it’s some sort of silver bullet, or that somehow we’re going to win people over to ourselves and then import the Gospel in. I think we’re better leading with the Gospel itself.

I’ve been thinking a little bit about the labels we use to describe how we do things this week, because I think community engagement – or social justice – and cultural engagement – are really important, but I agree with you on the dangers. What about using the terms “Gospel Justice” and “Gospel Engagement” to get that priority order right?

Yeah. So. In terms of good works – we preached through James earlier last year – the Gospel tells me that I treat people with grace. I’m a sick people being made well. I’m to treat people that way. James chapter 2 is just really clear – you either get the Gospel or you don’t, and if you do, you treat people in a certain way. I don’t think you need a fancy word for that. And then it’s about that simplicity of preaching the Gospel to a world that is lost, and nothing will save but the declaration of who Jesus is, and what he’s done.

There is a model for that. The Scriptures, not least of which, Jesus himself. It’s a model. Marriage models the Gospel – so when you’re talking about marriage and sex and that kind of thing, you talk about it as a picture of the Gospel. And you’ve got Jesus’ parables, he’ll go “so there was a farmer in the field, and he needs some workers…” – he tells the Gospel of Grace in categories of whatever the debate is at the time. What he never allows those categories to do is distort what the Gospel is. It’s about letting the Gospel shape the way you come to an issue – so you ask “what does the Gospel have to say about this issue?” not “what does moralism have to say about this issue?” that’s the difference isn’t it. The question you need to ask is “if the Gospel were to be framed in the categories that are now in front of me, how would that be expressed?”

Which is what I think was the beauty of that asylum seeker post – it was just here’s Gospel categories applied in this situation. Here’s self sacrifice. Here’s how we as Christians tell the Gospel story by what we say into this situation. It’s the same with marriage equality stuff. The idea that you might sacrifice your sexuality for something bigger – that you might lay down your life to take up your cross – that confronts our culture but also provides an opportunity to express the Gospel through the stance we take.

So, back to The Project, you got the call from them second time around

Yeah. So, a researcher calls me, Monday after Christmas, and says, it’s so and so from the Project – have you got ten minutes? And I thought. I think I do. Sure. He ran me through the story, started to ask some questions, and then started to push me – about the decline in the census numbers – and starts to push me on whether this represents the collapse of Christianity.

And you’d pitched something into them between hadn’t you – about Kevin Rudd’s redefinition of Christianity – because you’d built a relationship with the producer while you were there?

I had five minutes after the show – and I was shameless – I said if you think I did ok, then I would like to talk about religious stuff with you guys again. I think I can give you what you want.

I emailed him about the K-Rudd stuff and he said “it’s over we’re not running it.” I think he thought he’d be voted out in a matter of days, and nobody would care.

I was still surprised to get the call.

Tell me about how you went about building relationships with a view to the longer term – at the heart of my PR advice is that it’s all about relationships. Building relationships with the media and developing trust and rapport.

Well it works in two ways, doesn’t it. It works in terms of just the actual person to person relationships. In which case you’ve got to be yourself, unless yourself is a really nasty and horrible person. In which case it’s over. And all the pastoral stuff you know anyway – everybody has a story, it’s important to be empathetic, to listen – you just want to keep doing that. The danger is that at the end of the day we do things to please people, so part of it is in yourself being confident as a Christian that you can hold your views with conviction, but be pleasant about it. That’s half the battle in our culture anyway – holding our views with good conscience and conviction, but doing it in a winsome and gracious way. So that’s the first way.

In terms of the business side of things – it’s remembering what they want from a guest or an interview. They want a dialogue. They want a conflict story. They want to be told they’re wrong. And they want short snappy sentences – particularly on a show like the Project, and if you can be interesting and funny – then go for it. It’s about working out what they want for that show – and giving them more of it.

Tell me about how you managed to apparently master the form of The Project in two goes?

You’re too kind – I think sometimes we end up doing stuff because they’re natural to us anyway, because it kind of works. It’s my nature to be very serious about things, but also to want to joke and have a joke. It’s my nature to be a bit of a people pleaser and to have a laugh. I’m not sure how that works – but it seems to work.

There is that business side to it – it’s about working out what product they want to buy, and then delivering it. So they want friendliness. They want chummy and matey conversations. They want the conflict. And they want to be able to finish on a joke – so you know, that’s kind of what we got the last time around. We had some serious topics – the topic itself, and abuse in the church and whether that had anything to do with it, and then I ended up trying to convert Dicko. Telling him to give Jesus another go – but doing it with a smile on my face.

You said in the lead up to your appearance you started watching it a bit more. Tell me how you went about exegeting the show, the ending with a joke thing is quite a perceptive observation.

So they call it infotainment – they mash together two things, the desire to be a news show, and entertaining. You can take two attitudes to that. And if you’re a news junky like me, it seems a bit like they’re dumbing it down – and they could be spending a whole hour of hard core news. And they are. But they’re also opening up news to an entirely different audience – people are watching the news again. And more than that, the people giving them the news are actually serious about it. So Carrie is actually a news presenter, and Charlie takes it very seriously, I was so impressed with that when I was there, and even Hughsie, they’ve change around a bit now, but he was there as a “token comedian” – he’s a very funny guy, but he was so engaged. They’re all very engaged around the production meeting table. Thinking things through.

You see that and you go what’s going on here. They want to get the information out, and have fun doing it. They seem to have that balance right. So you just try to mesh into that vibe. If you want to get Biblical about it, it’s the all things to all men thing, isn’t it. I’m never going to be Charlie or Dave – we don’t have to be – we go and meet people half way as an act of grace, we don’t leave behind what is fundamental to us. Jesus is our great model – he goes and he eats with sinners and tax collectors – he’s there with them, and yet he says the world will hate you because it hates me. He’s not going there to be loved, he’s going there to love. Our great danger is we go somewhere and the first thing we say is “please love me” and at that point the world’s affirmation of us is our idolatry, and we’ll rapidly discard anything that will make people not love us. But if we’re not so concerned about being loved, as loving, and revealing the Gospel, then we don’t fall into that trap. In a nation like Australia that’s easier sometimes than we think it might be. Australians like people to be themselves. They know when you’re faking it, and they don’t need you to conform.

In ministry I think we have to operate under the Tony Abbott principle. This has profoundly affected the way I think about doing ministry in Australia. I was in the lower north shore of Sydney, doing ministry, when Abbott became leader of the opposition and the Sydney Morning Herald and all their mates wrote off the Liberal Party until 2020, and the reality was the very opposite. The Liberals jumped in the polls. And we said “what is going on” – and of course, the answer is Australians like it when people talk straight. They hate spin – particularly when it comes to personal presentation. They love it when someone shoots from the hip and is just themselves. This means don’t fudge or undersell the hard stuff. We committed to not pulling our punches in sermons – we didn’t sugar coat anything – we gave it straight, without trying to explain it straight. God was good to us, every time we had a sermon like that we had visitors. I’d go up afterwards and say “it’s not always like that” and the standard response was “no, we loved it… there’s an authenticity.”

Authenticity and not pandering is the way to go.

Which brings us back to cultural engagement…

Yeah, we’ve just got to remember there is a silver bullet – and it’s already in the chamber – and it’s the Gospel. And anything that dilutes that is potentially very dangerous. And my other principle is that I’m seeking to lead with the Gospel. The Gospel is not the last part I want to say – it has to frame everything I’m going to say – now there are practical challenges that come with that, but if I’ve got it in my head, then hopefully that’s where I’ll go. All the PR guys tell you you’ve got to be on message. We’ve just got to work out what our message is. And it’s got to be the Gospel. Hasn’t it. It’s got to be the Gospel. The Gospel of Jesus is great. Peter Jensen is famous for how he approached the media. He just said “I’ve got to tell you about three things – God, Jesus, Bible” – I dropped the first one. I just want to go straight to Jesus because I’m not a unitarian.

There’s an appropriateness to that because God speaks to the world in and through Jesus. That is the bridge between infinite God and finite us.

“I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. 26 Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do.

27 “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”

So there you go. What I love is the way Jesus does that. There is no way to know about God other than through Jesus. Which makes sense of the very next thing Jesus says.

28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

Because if you are weary, and you are burdened, and there is no way to get to God other than Jesus, then the most logical, the most loving, the most natural thing for Jesus to say at that point is to say “come to me all of you” because there’s no where else to go. Your proclamation to anybody is those two things – making the exclusivity claim, and making the claim to rest in Jesus. And one hangs on the other.

One of our great idols – we’ve talked about this a little – is to be loved by the world. I think one of the problems that people doing public Christianity face, and this applies to blogging as well, and this is where the ‘cruciform’ thing comes in – it’s very easy to get on a soapbox, it’s very difficult to use that soapbox to deflect attention away from yourself and to Jesus. Can you talk about that? For all the fame and fun that comes from being on The Project – the concept that John the Baptist had “I must decrease so he may increase…”

I remember being in the vestry of a church once, and on the noticeboard was an ad from a magazine to buy a “50 years of Cliff Richard” plate, and somebody had just written, in pen, big enough to see, but small enough to be be discrete “John 3:30″ – which is that verse. So that’s your principle. You say “my job is to talk about Jesus” – what’s the mechanism of that, for John the Baptist, all of Judea went to him, so it’s ok for all of Judea to go to you, but not ok if you don’t point to Jesus. And John, of course, is incredibly impressive in the way that he goes about it, because he takes the people with him and he sends them to Jesus, and of course, he gets cut off pretty quickly. But that’s his intention. So what do you do?

You’ve got to stay humble. You’ve got to remember that you’re a sinner and Jesus is your saviour. You’ve got to get a good wife. Who’ll keep you humble. That’s really helpful. You’ve got to spend your time at the foot of the Cross. You’ve got to remember that at the end of the day it really is just about the audience of one – here’s the thing. If I keep talking about Jesus – that’s going to cure me of any desire for popularity. You cannot desire to be popular and pronounce the exclusivity of Jesus, and judgment, in the mainstream media. You can do it in our little Protestant ghettos.

Yeah, but the way you did it, it didn’t seem as offensive as the guys standing on street corners

I just kept saying to myself “keep smiling, keep smiling” – except when I was talking about the child abuse stuff, but that’s a good example to – when you’ve got to wear something, wear it. Greg Clarke was great on that one – when he was doing his stuff on the Da Vinci Code a few years ago, he said “where Dan Brown lands his punches, you’ve got to take them on the chin.” So, where it comes to the treatment of women – we’ve got to absolutely take it on the chin. Concede it. That’s part of the winsomeness. When you’re not being defensive all the time, it’s a chance to go “oh, ok”… it’s kind of the skill of empathy as well. The older you get the more you have heard people’s stories and you get it. You get where people are hurting.

Making stuff not about you is a profound challenge for blogging as well

When you’re doing stuff outside of Christian circles, I’ve got it in my head “the world will hate you because it hated me first” – I’m thinking theology of the cross, not theology of glory. To do a bit of Luther. I think when we’re in our Christian circles, we’re desperate to impress them. Desperate to get it right. And if you are a little bit good at what you do, and people like what you do, then I think that’s where the danger is for us as Christians. There’s a tension. God is constantly using sinners to minister to other sinners. So just crack on with it. It is interesting just trying to work out what it is you want, and what it is you’re trying to do, and who it is you’re trying to impress.

For me it’s finding my rhythm. I just go “I’ve done a lot of stuff, now I’m just going to write about stuff that interests me, and I force myself to get on and blog about the little things that have caught my mind.” It’s about making yourself do it, and people will either like it or they won’t. If you’re purely blogging for the people around you, then I don’t think you’re doing it for the right reason. So blogging is partly my way of having an effect, but also my way of processing as well. I do a lot of thinking that way.

Your blog is very impressive as well – and the danger is you look around at what other people are doing, we look at each other and you go “why am I not doing what they’re doing” so you look at Tim Challies, whose a guy like me who just said “I’m going to do a bit every day” and when you look at what he’s doing, it’s not extraordinary. It’s consistently good. The wrong response to that is to go “well what am I doing wrong” – the right response is to be thankful.

Any last words…

This has been exciting. It’s been really encouraging. One of the sweetest things to come out of all of this has been the tweets, the mentions online and the emails from people. I had some lovely emails from people who really appreciated it, and the consistent thing I got was people saying “Thank you for just talking about Jesus and not being ashamed of it.” So one thing I’d say is, if you see people doing that, in public. Do encourage them. Do thank them for it. Because you do feel like you’re leaning out 90 degrees off Niagara Falls sometimes, and you do wonder who is holding the rope behind you, and just to turn around to see a bunch of people holding the rope is tremendously encouraging, and encourages you to lean out a bit further next time. So do encourage people. That sounds like a shameless attempt to have people write to me…

What a stunning performance. He captured the medium perfectly and was constantly on message. The segue out of the Brooke Satchwell interview that was all about sex on TV was brilliantly winsome. Especially when you check out Charlie’s face while Brooke was talking.

The best bit came near the beginning when Charlie asked “what does it mean to be an Anglican Priest in 2013?”…

“It’s actually pretty much the same as it has been for 2,000 years. I’m opening up the Bible and telling people about the great news of the love of God in Jesus Christ and how it radically can transform your life through forgiveness and why that is not just emotionally and spiritually satisfying but also intellectually and historically credible. The great thing now in 2013 is I that I get to do some of that from an iPad.”

Another great bit was in the bullying segment…

“I wonder if part of it is just that we live more and more in this individualistic culture where everything says “it’s all for you, it’s all for you, it’s all for you” and then you reach a situation where you’re just asked to put yourself out completely for someone else and that notion of sacrificial love which we used to have in our culture just isn’t so prevalent any more. It’s not that people don’t want to, it’s just a model we don’t have any more.”

The Christian panellist, Christian Democrat MP from New South Wales, Fred Nile, isn’t exactly presented in the media as being moderate and nuanced. Lawrence Krauss went toe-to-toe with John Dickson – one of Australia’s most impressive Christian thinkers, and while it was a bit of an agree fest, Krauss showed he was capable of being winsome and engaging. And he was back. The rest of the panel were window dressing for this fight – former British Anglican Bishop, the openly gay Gene Robinson was on as something like the middle ground between the two, and there were a couple of Australian pollies – Amanda Vanstone and Susan Ryan.

I was worried. I wasn’t going to watch. And then I flicked to the ABC at about 9:45. And caught this interaction…

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, there Fred. I want to ask you when the suicide rate is so high in LGBT teens, when you use such hateful and disgusting language about them, do you not feel – or I think maybe you should – feel slightly responsible for some of this that goes on?

FRED NILE: I must object to that because I will give you $1,000 if you can find anywhere where I have said anything which is hateful or vicious about homosexuals. Okay.

TONY JONES: Okay. I think it is time to move on.

Fred was facing a pretty hostile group of panellists – even the other religious guy was against his clear presentation of the historically orthodox understanding of the gospel. He managed to be relatively gracious, speak of God’s judgment, and keep pointing the conversation back to Jesus.

I missed this bit… according to the transcript.

FRED NILE: Because I take, as my authority, Jesus Christ, the son of God, and also the living word and I believe that God gave to us the written word, the holy Bible and as a Bishop you would know the church for 2,000 years and longer has upheld marriage as it is and has also said that homosexuality is immoral and unnatural and so on. So you are going against the teaching of the church so you should be ashamed to be a Bishop and going against the teaching of the church.

TONY JONES: I’m just going to interrupt because…

FRED NILE: I am agreeing with (the transcript says “referring to”) that atheist over there.

That came after Gene Robinson had played down any meaningful distinction between religions.

GENE ROBINSON: I am actually delighted to respond to that question. It is the experience of the living God in my own life. That is why I stick with it. That is why I believe that the church, the synagogue, the mosque can constantly reform itself because God’s will is being revealed to us over time. We are constantly understanding better God’s will and this is one of those places where we are changing what we have believed for 2 or 3,000 years. I believe that scripture is holy in the sense that it is the story of people who have had an experience with the living God and we read it in order to know where to look in our own lives for an experience of the living God. And so I do believe in it. The Church has got a lot to apologise for but, then again, don’t we all? And I believe that this is the way to discern God’s will and I am thrilled to be a part of that.

I also missed this.

AMANDA VANSTONE: So you can be a nice person your whole life and still not get into heaven?

FRED NILE: That’s right. That’s right.

TONY JONES: Just excuse me for one second because…

AMANDA VANSTONE: It is not worth going there.

FRED NILE: Yes.

TONY JONES: …on this table we have two…

FRED NILE: To have eternal life you…

TONY JONES: Excuse me. Excuse me for one minute.

FRED NILE: …have to believe in Jesus Christ as saviour.

TONY JONES: Excuse me for one minute.

FRED NILE: There’s only one way.

Amanda Vanstone came back at him again…

TONY JONES: Just to sort of end this part of the discussion, can I just bring Fred back in here. I mean are you worried if you create an exclusive world where your version of Christianity leaves out people like Gene, that that is actually bad?

FRED NILE: Well, I’m not leaving him out. He is excluding himself. I haven’t left him out. I want him to come in.

TONY JONES: Well, in fact, he’s not excluding himself in the sense that he is a bishop with his own congregation.

FRED NILE: I would like you, at the end of this program, to say, “I believe in what you have just been saying Fred.” I hope he might do that.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: But all the people who also believe in God but from other religions are also excluded, I presume. So basically you’re an atheist about all the other religions. It’s just yours you’re not. Is that correct?

FRED NILE: I leave it to God. He is the judge and he will judge each person.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: So, no, but are they excluded? If you’re not a Christian but you, say, you’re a very faithful Muslim or a faithful Jew, are you excluded?

FRED NILE: I’m just saying God will judge them not me.

TONY JONES: Okay. We’ve got a…

FRED NILE: I know God is a loving God and God will be fair in his dealing with each individual.

And kept pushing that “good enough for God” wheelbarrow all the way up the hill.

AMANDA VANSTONE: I don’t know the details of the second case but they would seem, on what you have said, to be inextricably related. I mean the more you have people saying Muslims want to go and kill everybody, the more you have whipping everyone else up into a frenzy of fear and apprehension and a feeling that they must deal with this. So it goes back to what my granny said: if you lead a good life, you will get into any heaven worth getting into and it follows that you – you know, if I get up to Heaven and St Peters says, ‘Gee, you made a mistake and you went to the Anglican Church and you should have gone to a Catholic one or you should have gone to some other church,” I’m going to be bitterly disappointed because I went to a Christian school and I was taught the need to be a good person and not judge people, as you say, on labels. It doesn’t matter if they are Catholic or Anglican or Muslim or whatever. What matters is whether they are a good and decent person and that is how we should be dealing with each other. And once you start this, “Well, they’re Muslims. They want to kill you,” well, you’re separating it out, you’re getting into us and them and you will have battles, ugly ones, where people will be killed.

How wishy washy and meaningless. She didn’t pull her punches after Tony Jones had rung the bell for the end of the evening’s discussion though, hitting out with this low blow that Fred Nile couldn’t reply to.

AMANDA VANSTONE: Fred. Fred, I think I can help you with one thing at least and that is that any God worth following wants converts not conscripts. So religious people should stop looking to parliaments to conscript people into a belief that they don’t adopt.

That’s bad. It’s not very nice. It’s poor form. According to her view of salvation, she should be a little worried now.

Krauss on Labels

This was another bit that showed the intolerance of the New Atheists and the contrast with Jesus… this was in a discussion of the recent events in England…

FRED NILE:… I follow what Jesus said: love your enemies and that is the central teaching of the Christian faith. It’s not a source of violence against people at all.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Who are the enemies in this case? I just don’t who the enemy are. Are you saying Islam is the enemy? You know, the problem is…

FRED NILE: Well, whoever is attacking you…

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Yeah.

FRED NILE: Whoever is attacking you, like in Cairo, burning down the Cathedral, that is your enemy. So you still love them but you try to change that society.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Part of the problem here, and I agree with, of course, what you just said, but we label people and religion is a wonderful way of labelling people and making us versus them. And so we don’t see the people, we see them being Christians or Muslims and we hate them because of that and so that’s another reason why, I think, religion gets in the way because it causes us to stereotype people instead of seeing people as individuals with a common humanity…

Tony Jones interrupts with something meaningless… and Krauss gets back on point…

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: The point is that obviously they were driven by hate. My point was that they were not killing that poor young man because they knew him, they knew anything about him. They had already labelled him by a bunch of labels: military, representative of a Christian state that had done supposed atrocities against Islam and that is the kind of labelling that leads people to be able to do these heinous acts because they no longer see people as people but representative of something they hate and that, to me, is one of the real problems of the us versus themness of religious groups that cause other people to no longer be people.

Then he lets this clanger rip. Holy contradiction Batman.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Steve Weinberg, who is a physicist and also an atheist, said that there are good people and there are bad people and good people do good things and bad people do bad things. When good people do bad things, it’s religion.

Where Nile went wrong

Nile wasn’t great on the homosexuality question. He was faithful. He tried. He tried to be loving. But he was just outclassed and out of touch on the origins of homosexual orientation. He argued that same sex attraction is a choice because it is changeable – when all that reveals is that change is possible, it says nothing about the origins of the attraction. What was interesting was that Krauss and Robinson had a bit of a disagreement – Robinson, “the gay Gene” (line of the night) suggested same sex attraction is a product of environmental factors that kick in before you’re three, which is consistent with just about everything I’ve read on the topic. Krauss “corrected” him, apparently he’s a biologist now, and there is a gay gene out there. Because some animals are gay. That’ll be news to people who’ve conducted twin studies.

I didn’t love his emphasis on the distinction between the Old Testament and the New Testament – the continuity is greater than the departure, and Jesus affirms the New Testament. It’s hard to present a nuanced account of the narratives of the Old Testament when the dices are loaded like they were in the questions, and when people have pretty strong preconceptions about horrible stories in the Old Testament, as though God affirms what is happening there. Like this exchange. Thanks for your objectivity and literary nuance Tony…

TONY JONES: Just like, in fact, you could take that psalm, which is out of the old testament, which suggests you could dash babies’ heads against rocks as part of a revenge against the Babylonians…

FRED NILE: Well, that’s the point I’m making, that that is no longer relevant in the new testament period. Jesus said that was the old covenant. We’re now under the new covenant.

The answer isn’t that that verse somehow applied literally once upon a time. The answer is to look at genre. Psalms, poetry, aren’t exactly known for being law. The Psalm does not say “you must dash babies’ heads against rocks”… nor is there any evidence that Israel was ever in a position where dashing Babylonian babies against rocks was a possibility. Perhaps, just perhaps, the Psalm is saying that Babylon is really, really, really bad. So bad that people who do things that sound really, really, really, bad to them are commended because they are so bad that such an act is good by comparison. That seems to make more sense of the text than a command to murder babies. Especially in its literary context, and in the narrative context (Israel’s history). Here is the offending verse…

7 Remember, Lord, what the Edomites did
on the day Jerusalem fell.
“Tear it down,” they cried,
“tear it down to its foundations!”8 Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is the one who repays you
according to what you have done to us.9 Happy is the one who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.

This insensitivity to the context of passages in the Old Testament was demonstrated by panellists as well, so Krauss:

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: I am sure we will get to talk more about marriage but I want to go back to the questioner a little bit because it seems to me I actually kind of agree with him a little. I can’t quite understand why you stay in the church. I mean, look, you read the Bible and it’s pretty explicit. You know, there’s that wonderful section, really heart-warming, where Lot is visited by these angels, men and the town’s people want to take him on a raid and he says ‘No, no, rape my daughters instead,’ and, you know, it is one of the wonderful parts of the Bible. And when you read all of this and, you know, you read that men who lay together should be killed and all that, you know you can interpret it all you want but you’re sort of picking and choosing, I think. You decide you want to be a Christian and you throw out the stuff that you don’t like, like I think most Christians do, actually. Throw out the stuff you don’t like, keep the stuff you do. Why not just throw out the whole thing and just be happy and love people and be gay?

Lot’s actions aren’t affirmed in this narrative, you get the sense, if you’re a normal reader, that Lot isn’t held up as a paragon of righteousness here. Description isn’t prescription. This would be like me reading Krauss describing his version of Christian theology and ignoring the context and assuming that’s what he believes…

“People who are loving, caring, good people will go to hell.”

Or perhaps:

“Well, I mean, I actually think the worse crime in the new testament is the crucifixion of Jesus.”

The fuller context of these quotes is more fun than the misquoting game though…

Where Nile got it right – pushing Krauss on Jesus

The best bit of the night, for mine, was how incoherent Krauss looked on Jesus. He lost points a couple of times, and had the twittersphere turning against the snide new atheists with gems like this one…

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Well, let me jump in and say – I mean we’re all pretending Jesus was this great guy but let’s step back and say this guy also seemed to say if you don’t believe in me you know what, you’ll be condemned. You know you won’t get to heaven. You’ll be condemned eternally to pain and worse than the people in Sodom and Gomorrah, just for not believing in me. What kind of God would you – I mean, you know, what kind of love is that? What kind of love…

FRED NILE: That was the…

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: People who are loving, caring, good people will go to hell for all eternity for choosing – choosing to have the – to use their brains and I find that just, you know.

Then there was this one…

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Well, I mean, I actually think the worse crime in the new testament is the crucifixion of Jesus. It seems to me amazing that you solve the problems of the world by having someone sacrifice – by having this person violently tortured and sacrificed for the sins of a non-existent forbearer, who made a mistake of taking an apple from a rib-woman. I mean it just doesn’t seem to make sense.

TONY JONES: Okay. All right.

FRED NILE: Jesus was dying for all of our sins. Your sins and my sins and the victim’s sins.

And finally, what I think made the night worth the price of admission… or what would have if I’d paid to be admitted…

FRED NILE: I would just like to challenge Lawrence that the greatest fact is the fact of Jesus Christ.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: How do you know?

FRED NILE: He is a reality and he came into this world to show us the way of salvation and he said in his own teaching…

LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Is that because he said he did?

FRED NILE: …”Who do you say that I am?” And so the question you have to ask who was Jesus Christ and what is his meaning – what is his meaning, his life to you and his death? You talked about the crucifixion. What does his death mean for you? And it’s a source of salvation. He died for our sins, the sins of the world.

And now, I have an example. This is how you go into an essentially hostile environment. Kochie lobs this set-up shot in front of the artist of a controversial piece of art work depicting Jesus as indigenous (which he was, to Palestine), transvestite (which he wasn’t), and as a drag queen. It’s clearly a piece of art designed to shock. He gives the artist free range to slag off Christianity’s record when it comes to these groups. And then he turns to Guy Mason, who’s an Anglican minister from Melbourne. And Guy smashes it out of the park. He talks about how Jesus died for sinners (a bit of substitutionary atonement). And invites people to use this as an opportunity to consider the way Jesus loved sinners and died for all of us. He leaves the shrill artist speechless, and debunks any sense of hostility.

I especially love the little dig about it being a “cliched” piece of art.

But you can also be “on message” for the gospel by not being deliberately on message. Kate Bracks. MasterChef. Is a Christian, this wasn’t a big deal in the series – except when she refused to call the Dalai Lama holy. She’s a Christian. And on Sunday night she won a competition that was watched by bucket loads of people. Perhaps because she didn’t want God being a product placement alongside Handy Ultra Paper Towel, or perhaps because she’s just classy, she didn’t choose to thank God when she won. Publicly, anyway. She thanked her husband and she acted with grace, poise and charm. And then. Today. She got to talk about why she didn’t thank God.

Kate says she thought about it, but then:

“But then I thought, everyone then goes ‘Oh great, it just sounds like the Logies’. It sounds corny and that is not the type of Christian I am,”

But what sort of Christian is she? This seems like a good opportunity to make a statement about her faith, right… well, she does (with a bit of humour when she was asked if she prayed for the win):

“I’m always talking to God but I don’t actually pray that he’ll help me win because I don’t really think he cares too much about that to be honest,” she said.

“I would say that I believe what the Bible says and I try to live that way so that it’s about trying to have a relationship with God and not about the things you do or don’t do.”

That’s how you do it. Classy. Winsome. Gospel centred. I know some churches that are lining up to get Kate along. Lets hope she doesn’t get worn out too quickly by this attention.

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About St. Eutychus

Eutychus was a young man who fell to his death because the Apostle Paul preached for too long (Acts 20). He's now the patron saint of non-boring Internet.

About Nathan

Nathan runs St Eutychus. He loves Jesus. His wife. His Daughter. His Son. Coffee. And the Internet. He is currently a campus pastor at Creek Road South Bank, a graduate of Queensland Theological College (M. Div) and the Queensland University of Technology (B. Journ). He spent a significant portion of the last 8 years working in Public Relations, and now loves promoting Jesus in Brisbane and online.